An ex-Tulane University football player found guilty of cutting and battering four people during a knife fight outside a French Quarter strip club five years ago should have his conviction overturned because his attorneys failed to gather crucial evidence to help his defense, an Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judge has decided. Judge Arthur Hunter on Friday granted Ray Boudreaux, 28, a native of Abbeville, a new trial.

Hunter on Monday tentatively scheduled the trial for Sept. 9, and he set Boudreaux's bail at $425,000. Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's Office has said it will seek a review of Hunter's decision from Louisiana's 4th Circuit Court of Appeal.

Prosecutors initially charged Boudreaux with attempting to murder five people outside a Bourbon Street nightclub on Sept. 16, 2007, hours after Tulane had lost to the University of Houston in the Superdome. A jury convicted the former running back on July 22, 2008, of one count of aggravated battery and three counts of attempted manslaughter. He received a 10-year prison sentence.

Boudreaux had claimed self-defense, a stance that Hunter suggested could have been bolstered by video footage and witness accounts that inexplicably never made it to the jury.

Hunter, who said he had never before granted post-conviction relief, allowed Boudreaux to be free on bond while he appealed the verdict in his case. Boudreaux did not report to prison until after he exhausted his appeals in November.

Boudreaux then filed for post-conviction relief on the grounds that his attorneys, Eric Wright and Kenisha Parks, provided ineffective assistance of counsel.

In the judge's opinion, Boudreaux and his new attorney, D. Majeeda Snead of the Loyola Law Clinic, successfully argued that his trial lawyers knew a surveillance camera outside the Deja Vu strip club in the 200 block of Bourbon had captured video of the fight that could have helped support Boudreaux's version of events. And the establishment's manager, Thomas Muzika, told police Boudreaux begged him for sanctuary during the fight and that he had watched others involved in the fight attack the football player as he tried to flee.

Nevertheless, the tape wasn't presented as evidence and Muzika was never asked to testify during the trial, Hunter wrote in a 12-page opinion.

"Trial counsel failed to perform at best the bare minimum investigation," Hunter said. "The existence of a video which likely corroborated Boudreaux's account of the events would have cast doubt in the jury's mind regarding the state's assertion that Boudreaux was the aggressor."

Furthermore, Wright and Parks didn't contact or subpoena a second witness police had spoken to the night of the fight. That witness, Sharon Rhone, was prepared to testify that she saw someone other than Boudreaux stabbing victims.

At trial, while questioning a police officer, Boudreaux's counsel alluded to what Rhone had seen but only as it pertained to the stabbing of one victim, court documents said. Boudreaux was acquitted of stabbing that person.

"Trial counsel offers no reasoning for why a subpoena was not issued and could not state what efforts were made to contact Ms. Rhone, or how exhaustive those efforts were," Hunter said.

Wright and Parks also didn't investigate the medical history of one of the victims, Keith Townsend, who allegedly suffered irreversible brain damage from Boudreaux's attack. Investigating Townsend's medical history would have shown the victim had mental deficiencies prior to that fight on Bourbon, Hunter wrote.

That would have permitted Wright and Parks to argue at trial that some of Townsend's trauma was being improperly attributed to Boudreaux's actions and may have prompted the jury to return with a different verdict, Hunter said. And the extent of Townsend's injuries factored into Boudreaux's 10-year sentence, Hunter explained.

On Monday, Donna Andrieu, Cannizzaro's chief of appeals, asked Hunter to stay Boudreaux's case and not set bail for him until the D.A. could appeal the judge's ruling. Hunter denied it, citing a law that says defendants given post-conviction relief are "entitled to bail as though (they had) not been convicted."

D.A. spokesman Chris Bowman on Monday said that prosecutors were disappointed Hunter had not ordered a stay in Boudreaux's case. Alluding to the fact that Hunter let Boudreaux out on bond for the duration of his appeal, Bowman remarked, "We certainly wish Judge Hunter had given the members of this community the same consideration by allowing his most recent decision to work its way through the appeal court" before giving the defendant the chance to make bail and secure his release.

Note:This story has been updated to clarify statements made by Sharon Rhone.